Manage billing

Billing has its own page in the dashboard, separate from Settings, so the people who need it (owner and finance) can reach it without also getting access to team management, analytics, or portal configuration.

Where it lives

Open Billing in the dashboard (/w/{your-forum}/billing). It’s visible to the forum owner and to any teammate with the finance role, see Invite team members & roles. Admins and agents don’t see it; billing lives in its own section rather than inside Settings.

What it shows today

The page centers on one card: your current plan.

During your free trial (or the grace period after it ends): the card shows your trial status and an Upgrade button. There are no usage-limit rows here, your trial runs at Basic-level limits, which aren’t the plan you’ve actually chosen yet, so showing them next to “Free trial” would be misleading. If your trial expired, the same button is still there, just in the “act now” color.

Once you’ve purchased a plan (Basic or Pro): the current plan card shows a status chip alongside your plan name. Basic is a one-time purchase, so the card just says Paid once, yours forever and when you purchased it, there’s no renewal date because there isn’t one. Pro is a subscription (monthly or yearly), so the card shows when it next renews (or, if a payment fails, when the current period ends instead). Below that, a separate card shows your usage limits, seats, questions, storage, and the rest, see Plans & limits for what each number means. If you’re on Basic, there are Upgrade to Pro and Upgrade to yearly Pro buttons. If you’re on Pro, there’s a Downgrade to Basic button, plus a Switch to yearly or Switch to monthly button (whichever interval you’re not currently on).

Upgrading (before your first purchase)

Clicking Upgrade opens a window that lays out both plans side by side, Basic ($9 one-time) and Pro, with each plan’s limits so you can compare before choosing. Pro has a monthly/yearly toggle right in its column: monthly is $99/month, yearly is $990/year, 2 months free compared to paying monthly all year. A currency selector in that window lets you switch between USD and INR before you pick a plan, the prices and buttons update immediately to match. Picking a plan takes you to a secure, hosted checkout page to complete payment. Your email is filled in from your account and cannot be changed there, so receipts always reach the address you sign in with. Promo codes, when you have one, are entered on that checkout page. Once payment completes, you’re redirected back here and your plan and limits update automatically, usually within a few seconds.

The same Upgrade button appears in the trial countdown banner at the top of every dashboard page, not just here, opening the same window without leaving the page you’re on.

Upgrading from Basic to Pro

Once you’ve purchased Basic, clicking Upgrade to Pro (or Upgrade to yearly Pro) no longer sends you to a hosted checkout page. Instead it opens a window that shows exactly what you’ll be charged today, subtotal, tax (if any), and the total, before you confirm anything. Confirming charges the same card you used for your Basic purchase, immediately, and starts your Pro subscription right away, on whichever interval you picked. There’s no proration or credit for the $9 you already paid: Basic was a one-time purchase with no ongoing subscription behind it, so the new Pro subscription is a clean $99/month (or $990/year) charge on top of it. Your plan and limits update within a few seconds of confirming, and your original Basic receipt stays in your invoices list below, it never disappears.

Switching between monthly and yearly Pro

Once you’re on Pro, Switch to yearly (or Switch to monthly, if you’re already on yearly) opens the same kind of confirm window: it shows what you’ll be charged today for the new interval, subtotal, tax, and total. Confirming charges your card immediately for a full period at the new interval and switches you over right away. There’s no proration: any unused time left on your current billing interval isn’t credited or refunded, the same “charged now, no proration” rule every plan change on this page follows. Your subscription, plan, and limits stay exactly the same, only the billing interval and price change.

Downgrading from Pro to Basic

From the Pro plan (monthly or yearly), Downgrade to Basic opens the same kind of window, showing the flat $9 (or the INR equivalent, plus GST if that’s your billing currency) you’ll be charged. Confirming charges that amount to your card immediately. This takes effect right away: your Pro features and higher limits end the moment you confirm, not at the end of your current billing period, and any unused time on your current Pro billing cycle is not refunded. If your current usage doesn’t fit inside Basic’s limits (for example, more team seats than Basic allows, or an active custom domain, which Basic doesn’t support), the window will tell you what to reduce before you can downgrade.

If you choose to pay in Indian Rupees (₹999 one-time for Basic, ₹9,999/month or ₹99,990/year for Pro), 18% GST is included automatically, shown as a note next to the price before you check out. We default the currency selector based on your browser’s timezone and language, but you can always override it, for example if your company is registered in the US but you’re checking out from India.

Buying for a company? Tick “I’m purchasing as a business” on the checkout page to add your business name and tax ID (GSTIN, VAT, EIN, and so on). They appear on your invoice and receipt automatically.

Invoices

A Payments & invoices card sits on the billing page at all times, even during your trial, before you’ve purchased anything, listing every payment right there, no separate window to open. Until you’ve made a purchase, it just says there’s nothing there yet. Once you have, each row shows the date, the plan, the amount, and a link out to view or download that payment, newest first. Pro shows your real monthly invoices, and Basic’s one-time purchase gets a proper invoice too (with your business tax ID on it, if you added one at checkout), so you can always find proof of what you paid. This list is a complete history: it keeps every past purchase, so upgrading or downgrading later never makes an earlier receipt disappear. A forum with a long history loads its most recent payments first; a Show older payments button underneath fetches further back, one page at a time, only appearing once there’s actually more to load.

If a renewal payment fails

Pro renews monthly, so if your card is declined or a payment otherwise fails, we’ll email your forum’s owner and finance members with a heads up and a link back to this page to update your payment method. If it’s still not resolved after a few days, we’ll send a final warning stating exactly when the subscription will be canceled. If payment still hasn’t gone through by then, the subscription is canceled and you’ll get a final email confirming it.

Canceling only pauses access, it never deletes anything: your questions, replies, and members are all still there. Resubscribe any time from this page to pick up right where you left off.

Once canceled, the current plan card stops showing your old plan and instead reads Subscription canceled, with a note that your subscription is no longer active and you can purchase a plan again to pick up where you left off. This is different wording from a free trial that simply ran out, since you did purchase a plan at some point, you didn’t just let a trial expire.

While a payment is still failing, before we’ve given up and actually canceled anything, the card shows different wording: Payment past due, with a note asking you to update your payment method to keep your subscription active. It deliberately never says “canceled” and never points you at purchasing again, since your existing subscription is still there and just needs a working payment method, not a fresh purchase (which would leave the old one behind). The persistent banner at the top of every dashboard page during this window shows the same wording.

Instead of an Upgrade button, this state shows a Make payment button (on both the card and the banner) that takes you straight to a secure page to pay the outstanding invoice, along with the amount due. That’s all it takes to bring the subscription back into good standing. Starting a brand-new plan while a payment is outstanding is turned off on purpose, paying the existing invoice is the fix, not buying again.

Deleting this forum

The forum owner sees a small “Delete this forum in Settings” link near the bottom of this page. It takes you to Settings > Advanced and scrolls you straight down to the danger zone there, where the actual permanent, typed-confirmation flow lives, including the blast-radius preview of what’s about to go, described in full in Delete your forum or account. Finance can see the rest of this page but never this link.

What’s coming

Upgrading and downgrading after your first purchase are both wired up now (see above). Canceling a Pro subscription in place of Stripe’s own “payment failed” cancellation flow isn’t wired up yet. We’ll update this page the day that changes.